I remember John Smoltz said one of his personal goals when he started closing was to pitch 9 consecutive innings with no hits, in other words, the equivalent of a no-hitter. A couple of years later he said it's not at all the same thing as a reliever - you have to have awesome stuff on 9 different days, and you have to face pinch-hitters and managers playing for the end of the game - it's much harder.

Uehara has just pitched the equivalent of a perfect game in relief. Unbelievably awesome.

Craig Kimbrel is insane. He's pitched 220 career innings with an ERA of 1.34 and a WHIP of 0.90. And 136 Saves at age 25.

But you never know how guys will last in that role. So many guys blow out, even guys who succeed for several years (ie. Rod Beck 250 saves 2.98 ERA before age 30, 36 saves, 4.09 ERA the rest of his career). But if he holds on, Kimbrel will be one of the greatest closers ever.

All that said, his 2013 isn't close to Koji's. His WHIP is 0.56!!! If he maintains it, it will be the lowest WHIP in the entire database.

Posted by dahsdebater on 9/16/2013 9:11:00 PM (view original):This should be a better formatting. All in all it looks more like Koji belongs with the 2 names below his on my list than the names above. He has the best H/9 number of the group.

Or if I want to make it sound even more significant, I could say that Kimbrel's WHIP is over 50% higher than Koji's. Also true - either way, Kimbrel lets more than half again as many runners on base as Koji does.